Gardening with Altitude and Attitude

I seem to be perpetually behind this year, as the days scoot by so quickly, and half the things I want to accomplish remain undone at the end of the day. I've always had more ideas than time to implement them, but that imbalance seems to be growing. Which is why I'm just now posting garden pictures from the end of July. *sigh*

My garden has thrived on neglect this year, as I've been busy with so many other projects and life events that I've had little time to do more than water, pull one or two weeds, and take pictures. So the garden is a big, messy jungle--but that's OK. Here's the state of the jungle at the end of July. I'll post updated jungle pix from yesterday after I get these up.

Here are wide shots, so I can remember what various parts of the garden looked like as a whole:

Often my favorite pictures to take are not the wide shots but the macro shots: the single flower in all its delicate detail, the accidental plant combination that charms me (Note: All my plant combinations are accidental. I have the artistic and design ability of a mud brick. So I take pictures to remember what worked so I can do it again.)

Bee in a squash blossom

Zinnias - nature's fireworks

Hollyhocks were one of the first flowers I learned to grow, and I still love them.

This year I made more of an effort to add flowers to my vegetable beds. These marigolds look right at home and add some much-needed color and cheeriness to the kohlrabi, lettuce, onions, and weeds.

More flowers in the veggie beds - borage and sweet peas

And alyssum pouring over the edge of the bed.

My first eggplant! I try to grow something new each year, and this year it's eggplant and ground cherries. I hate eggplant (too slimy!), but the fruits are pretty, and my co-workers like them.

Sacred datura, devil's trumpet, jimson weed... this plant has more names than Prince Charles. It's also native here, and the blooms are breathtaking. The rest of the plant is ugly, but a) the flowers are worth it, and b) you really can't kill it, which is a great advantage here in the land of drying winds, late frosts, and early frosts. It's seeding everywhere, so one of my fall projects will be to move the seedlings to the area where my property borders the road. I'm trying to get more wildflowers out there, and these should do well.

When planting out seedlings, I often forget how big plants get. Those seedlings are so tiny! There's so much bare ground! Then this happens. I do think the Love Lies Bleeding and Hopi Red amaranths look cool next to the Giant Pumpkin Vine That Is Threatening to Smother the Neighborhood though.

Another plant I'm growing for the first time this year: 4 O'Clocks. They seem quite happy here, even in our lousy soil. I'll be interested to see if they winter over.

And one more new plant I'm growing for the first time: marshmallow. I snagged this one at the Coconino County Master Gardeners annual plant sale.

Last year I planted some seeds for Japanese Morning Glory that I got in an online seed trade. They're just as prolific as regular morning glories, only with bigger, prettier blooms.

I hope that wherever you are, your garden is flourishing.

It's a beautiful summer morning here in the land of cinders and grasshoppers. We've had warm, sunny weather, including warm nights, all month, so the garden is going crazy. Every day plants are noticeably larger, and blooms appear as if out of nowhere. Unfortunately, weeds also appear as if out of nowhere--they seem to spring forth from our crappy soil and instantly become 3 feet high. I need to get busy this weekend clearing them out. Anyway, we'll ignore the weeds for a moment (or probably for another week, said the Procrastinating Gardener) and take a tour of the garden at the beginning of summer. There's a lot to see.

First up: the containers. I've learned that delicate little seedlings often do better here in containers than left to their own devices in our horrible soil with our horrible grasshoppers. So I've started doing more container gardening. So far, the experiment is successful. This is basil potted with something that goes by various names, including ornamental eggplant and pumpkin tree. I got the seeds in an online trade and applied my usual gardening philosophy: "Why not?" Apparently they become enormous, so this pot may end up being too crowded. We'll see.

I built a seed-starting rack this spring so I could start tender annuals and veggies from seed. The basil above is seed-grown, and so is this coleus. I'll move them to their own pots when they get a little bigger.

One grouping of containers by the front door:

And another. The white puffballs are onion blossoms. I keep a couple of pots of onions just outside the front door so I can have green onions year-round (this corner is the warmest spot in my yard). The pollinators love the flowers, so I let them bloom.

The tall thing in the white pot with the basil is Clematis tangutica. I grew it from seed I got from our local hospice garden, winter sown in 2017.

This is a rose called Purple Tiger. It has a story (yeah, I know, all my plants have a story, and I won't freakin' shut up about 'em. It's my blog, I'll blather if I want to). Anyway... Roses can be a challenge here in Flagstaff, especially out here on the east side with our cinder soil, grasshoppers, wind, and grasshoppers. I've killed more roses than I care to think about, including all the ones we brought with us from Southern California--except this one. (Yes, we actually moved some of our roses 450 miles in the dead of winter. We are a tad passionate about our roses.) We planted this poor thing in our backyard, where it got little more than water for about 3 years. It flourished. Last year we decided to stop trying to grow stuff in the backyard, since one of our dogs likes to dig, so we dug this one up and stuck it in a pot. It flourished. This spring it got too dry and died back. I kept waiting for it to recover, but it didn't. I gave it up for dead. A couple weeks later, a single tiny shoot appeared. Now it's blooming. I need to trim off the dead branches and decide whether to keep it potted or put it back in the ground. This is the toughest rose I've ever grown. I need to tell my local nursery about it so they can stock it. Oh, and it's gorgeous.

Our soil here is too alkaline for blueberries, so I grow mine in pots. I've managed to harvest about half a handful of berries so far this year:

Finally, I'm attempting to grow watermelons in a container. Yeah, I know, watermelons in Flagstaff. Sure. Good luck with that. The container is up against a south-facing wall, so I'm hoping that will provide enough heat and a long enough growing season. So far, so good:

Moving on from the containers. The mixed border looks like a jungle, and the hollyhocks are trying to take over the neighborhood:

The pond is thriving too. All ten of our fish (6 goldfish, 4 koi) made it through their first Flagstaff winter just fine and seem to be doing well, as are the pond plants:

The plant with the tiny yellow flowers is Ranunculus flammula, small creeping spearwort.

Water mint and my favorite water lily, Perry's Almost Black.

I had to drop my son off at the Phoenix airport earlier this week, so I stopped by my favorite water garden backyard nursery and picked up some water lettuce and water hyacinth for the summer. They're still looking a little pathetic from their sojourn in the car trunk on a 113-degree day, but they should bounce back in a week or so (side note: why, oh why, does anyone want to live in Phoenix? 113 degrees? Seriously? And that isn't even unusual down there).